A North Carolina voter changes with the winds
Millie Seifert is having a heck of a time making up her mind.
A Democrat in North Carolina, she was initially drawn to Republican Mike Huckabee but he exited the race long before the presidential primaries came to her state. So she thought Barack Obama was probably the man to get her vote. Then that strange preacher came along and it's no dice.
She's leaning toward Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton now. Or Republican John McCain. It depends.
This is one undecided voter.
"It's really starting to bother me because I have not settled on one," she said from East Bend, half an hour outside Winston-Salem, as Tuesday's North Carolina and Indiana primaries closed in like a thundercloud. "Every time I leave the house I change my mind.
"I change my mind watching the TV and hearing what they have to say.
"I'm just so confused."
So are many voters. But it's doubtful many favor a conservative Republican like Huckabee one day, then swing left to Obama and Clinton territory the next.
Seifert is 69, a mother of two, grandmother of six and a retired Kmart pharmacy technician who works as a nanny to supplement her pension.
Clinton is growing on her.
"She's hard as nails — you can knock her down but she won't go away," Seifert said with a creaky laugh. "I don't like her but I like her better now than Obama.
"Anybody that puts up with Bill Clinton is a strong person — I would've killed him," she said, laughing again in an aside about his misbehaving ways. "Now THAT one I do not like.
"I don't know," she mused. "Hillary just keeps coming back up."
The Associated Press has been asking Seifert what she thinks about the campaign since late last year as part of an AP-Yahoo News series of polls gauging how opinions have changed with the same group of voters.
Now it's time for those living in North Carolina and Indiana to make their choice. AP asked some of the poll respondents from those states to say how they are coming to their decision. Obama and Clinton are in a protracted struggle for the Democratic nomination while McCain has the Republican one sewn up.
The poll found the economy to be the No. 1 issue, and that's certainly a concern for Seifert.
Her son is a welder and her daughter, a medical transcriptionist. Thanks to the $500 a month she makes as a nanny, she can get out to eat with her daughter a few times a week.
But she can't afford to go to the mountains, 45 minutes away, or visit her brother and sister often in the next county. She stretches Social Security to cover her bills.
"You take these little mediocre jobs to fill in the gaps but you still don't have the money to do the things you used to," she said. "You don't ever retire; I don't think people ever really retire."
Still, her vote — whatever that turns out to be — is not tied to her material needs.
She wants the "mad dogs" in Congress to stop fighting. So she was initially drawn to the genial Huckabee before McCain drove him from the Republican race.
Obama also held out the promise of unity and making Washington work, but the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's inflammatory words about the U.S. tainted him in Seifert's estimation.
"I'm leaning toward McCain. If it's not him, it will probably be Hillary."
In short, she says, "I got a lot of thinking to do."
